The Celebes: New Man's Land of the Indies
caskets, slowly falling to decay in this tunnel
like gash between turbulent water and inac
cessible rock face.
Funeral parties carrying Toradja coffins to
this last resting place must have toiled like
Titans and looked like Lilliputians.
Strange "Doubles" Guard the Dead
Beyond Makale is another rock face closing
a side valley, but with trees crowning its top.
Converted into a series of vaults, like a color
less copy of those in Petra,* the Lemo cliff
is impressive, because, standing like spectators
outside the deep pockets in which burials
are made, are wide-eyed "doubles" leaning
on railings, like sports fans, high above the
scene. When a new corpse is buried in a cliff
tomb, his double takes its place in the rock
gallery.
To photograph these fascinating images as
closely as possible, I struggled up through
dense jungle growth and emerged on a crag
almost level with the portrait figures, their
eyes staring in eternal vigilance, their bodies
clothed in bright checks and bandanna colors.
Some have traveling sacks for their trip to the
land of souls (pages 76 and 77).
There was scarcely room enough to set up a
tripod, but the cliff was in deep shadow and a
long exposure was necessary. Once a tripod
leg slipped and the machine leaned toward the
void. It was a relief to reach the valley floor
again with my camera intact.
Even from close at hand there was no evi
dence that any of these crude figures were
mummies, as I had been told.
Patient inquiries, transmitted through com
pound fractures of speech from English through
Malay to the Toradja dialect, gave no satisfac
tory clue. If mummified figures instead of
portrait dolls ever stood here, the practice is
long since extinct.
The Toradjas, far from resenting my pres
ence, guided me up the steep boulders and
seemed eager to answer any questions. These
I propounded through my chauffeur, with
whom I had worked out a fairly satisfactory
means of communication with the aid of a little
red phrase book.
Swift sunset was upon us when I started to
leave, and bright was the fire at the cliff base
where some pagan was preparing to roast buf
falo meat.
"Tonight," I thought, "when bare-limbed
Toradjas cluster here at the base of this tall
cliff, and the fires of their feast, illuminating
their faces, lift the guardian tao-taos out from
the shadowy grottoes and put light in their
grotesque, lidless eyes, this will be a memo
rable scene."
But I had to set out for Makale, where, from
a high lawn overlooking a lotus lake, one hears
the chatter of the bazaar as a soothing hum,
and star dust specks the cool sky until the
rising of the moon.
As we entered the already dark tunnel of
trees, there came toward us a funeral party.
After all I had heard about Toradja graves, I
was, quite by chance, to witness a cliff burial.
But would my presence and camera be re
sented?
"They not look your camera; they look your
face," said my chauffeur, and as I leaped about
on the narrow ledges between the paddy fields
one member of the party motioned to me to
come closer.
A Child Goes to Her Cliff Tomb
At first sight it did not seem like a sad
occasion, for there was dancing and singing.
Had a chief been dead, warriors would have
sung and danced his praises. Certainly in
this case there were some more intent on the
feasting than on the burial of this eight-year
old girl.
But as the party swept aside and the cylin
drical bundle into which the corpse had been
bound was laid on the ground, the heavily
veiled mother crouched beside it and threw out
expressive hands as if she would cling to her
daughter for one more hour (page 79).
The Toradjas used to hold the bodies until
a propitious time for burial or until the neces
sary buffaloes had been assembled for slaugh
ter. By then, sorrow had so yielded to cere
mony that special mourners were employed to
keep the corpse from being entirely ignored
amid feasting which sometimes became an
orgy.
But this was a mere child and the presence
of only one bullock indicated that the family
was poor or the occasion of minor importance.
The whole attitude of the mother suggested
that the death had been recent, the memory of
the daughter fresh and poignant.
The niche into which this little body was to
be shoved was perhaps twenty feet above the
steep bank and a hundred feet above the rice
fields. An agile athlete, having cut toe notches
in a length of green bamboo, touched its top
to the slightly overhanging cliff and started up
the almost vertical pole (page 78).
There was nothing at the top to prevent it
from slipping, and the companion who helped
balance it seemed unconcerned. But first one,
then the other, mounted the slender bamboo
rod, squirmed onto the narrow ledge at the
* See "Petra, Ancient Caravan Stronghold," by
John D. Whiting, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE,
February, 1935.